Greatest Hits

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Cash Mega-Cow

I wonder, if for some reason, government was to offer great sums of money to researchers to "prove" that government policy was on the side of science, whether said recipient would choose integrity or the Cash Mega-Cow?

Did you not know the scientists who receive Uncle’s lusciously large lasting grants are the same scientists who sit on the committees which award the grants? Conflict? It’s true the various wealthy agencies have a permanent and ever-burgeoning staff (see Parkinson’s Law and this) which shuffles the booty to and fro, but they’re advised by transient academics who today are at their home institutions standing erect with their hands out, and tomorrow are on the Metro to the NIH to sit (erect) in judgment of their peers.

Yes, the same people who award the grants are those that receive them.

Didn’t you know this? It’s true a man can’t award himself a grant, but he can give one to his pal and neighbor, and when its his pal and neighbor’s turn to sit on the review committee, he can and does return the favor.

2 comments:

Mary Ann Doll
said...

In the 1950's and 60's there were small forest ranger, and, I suspect, park ranger stations scattered throughout the country. If our local "forestry" was typical, they all had weather stations which recorded daily and reported periodically. Add to these the DEW and Pine Tree radar stations, lighthouses and other government installations spanning the country and you get a total of thousands of locations where temperature, precipitation and relative humidity readings were taken. Obsolescence, consolidation and automation eliminated the majority of those far-flung locations while modern monitoring equipment was being installed close to developed areas such as at airports. If any temperature readings would be suspect it would surely be the most recent ones, and I don't recall the max-min thermometer at "the forestry" being graduated in hundredths of degrees. "Hottest year," my axe. Eric